Open Source Market Forecast

This report examines the overall open source database (OSDB) market solely from the perspective of the revenues directly attributable to the database products. It includes both product and service revenues, but ignores the revenues from any other hardware and software elements that may come bundled with it.

• Key messages
• Small but growing fast
  • The redefinition of the database market
  • IBM or Oracle will open source their core database offering
  • A service market
  • Regional market split
  • Supply-side dynamics
• Vendor market shares
  • A three tier market
  • Vendor consolidation towards the end of our forecast period
  • Demand-side dynamics
• The 'motivated' to 'mainstream' transition
• An enterprise rather than embedded software market
• ISVs and tools will be key to enterprise OLTP database uptake
• The rise of an OS business intelligence (OSBI) stack will be key to enterprise BI OSDB database uptake
• Still an enterprise server market
• OSS credentials
  • Low cost
  • Easier licensing regime
  • Source code access and change
  • Ability to pick and mix components
  • Cross-platform support
  • Independence and availability
  • Software quality
  • Community support
• Incumbents' strategy
• Positively influenced
  • Still in charge
  • Microsoft first, OSDBs second
  • Free databases
  • OSDB against Microsoft
  • LAMP support
  • It's the stack that counts
• Main OSDB vendors' strategy
  • MySQL
  • Spleepycat Software
  • Ingres Corp
  • PostgreSQL
  • EnterpriseDB
  • Greenplum
  • Pervasive Software
  • Sun
  • Firebird
  • Apache Derby
  • Oracle/Innobase